hello everyone,
going to have a go at setting up my first planted aquarium.
my tank is 6 feet long 15x15,ive got the chance on a cheap metal halide light is this going over the top on the lighting,or would flouresence lighting be good enough,i will also be using c02 and hopefully keep some discus in it. thanks a lot great forum
hixy

Hmm.. how cheap is cheap? You would be surprised at how cheap MH lighting is when you go to a lighting supplier and not an aquarium shop. And how many lights is it? For a 6' tank you would need three lights as the general rule is that one MH light is good for a 2'x2' area. Also what wattage is the bulb and what is the color temp? In general most planted tank people will go with NO or CF fluorescent lights as the selection is better, there is not as much heat problem and it's cheaper.

I just ran the math on your tank and it looks to be about a 70 gallon tank. You are not going to need a whole lot of light on this tank and MH lights IMHO would be overkill. You might want to head over to www.ahsupply.com and take a look at either a 2x96 watt kit. That would get you to just about 2.75 watts per gallon which is not a bad figure. If you want more light than that to grow more challenging plants then you could get 2X96 watt kits and a couple of 55 watt kits.

hello rex,
thanks for your reply i live in england so ordering anything from usa is a problem. i can get some lights called overtank luminaires by arcadia would these be any good for me. www.arcadia-uk.com/ as my
aquarium has no hood i want to keep it nice and tidy,not have cables everywhere thanks
hixy

Register Now

In order to be able to post messages on the The Planted Tank Forum forums, you must first register.
Please enter your desired user name, your email address and other required details in the form below.

User Name:

Password

Please enter a password for your user account. Note that passwords are case-sensitive.

Password:

Confirm Password:

Email Address

Please enter a valid email address for yourself.

Email Address:

Log-in

User Name

Remember Me?

Password

Human Verification

In order to verify that you are a human and not a spam bot, please enter the answer into the following box below based on the instructions contained in the graphic.